Despite the drastic relative devaluation of standard patents in the U.S., Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) continues to pioneer new industry standard smartphone and telecommunications technologies. Samsung announced this week that it had completed trials of the core technology it hopes will make up the fifth generation (5G) wireless standard.

The era of 4G LTE is still young, but Samsung is already cooking up a faster replacement, 5G. According to Samsung the technology will allow you to download a full length movie over the air in less than a second. Versus LTE, which tops out at around 75 megabits-per-second (Mbps), 5G will offer blazing speeds of up to tens of gigabits-per-second (Gbps).

The bad news is that Samsung says the technology likely won't hit the market till 2020.

And the other bad news is that the technology has a lot of hurdles to overcome to achieve commercial viability -- it required 64 antennas for Samsung to achieve its record result.

Still with China and the European Union investing big in the development of the next generation standard, and top electronics firms like Samsung stepping up to the plate, it seems that a solution will eventually be found.

quote: That's just it. If you never use Youtube, netflix, whatever on your cellular-service device because the bandwidth wouldn't let the stuff play well, you easily stayed under your cap. All of a sudden *bam* - you can stream anything you want. ...

I'm sure that's a valid usage scenario for some (many? most?) people. But for me, I currently have unlimited Verizon 4G LTE (including unlimited 4G hotspot) and I've never gone over 3GB in a month.

Because for me no matter how large of a data bucket I have, consuming content on a phone is still far less appealing than doing so on a laptop.

Honestly I have to agree with that. I haven't got the foggiest idea how anyone watches Netflix on their phone.

Anyway though, I tend to think more from the standpoint of people who have to live off of cellular data service as their one-and-only internet connection. Like, no cable or DSL available. Which, realistically, is tens of millions of US citizens.

They're the ones who don't have the slightest opportunity to participate in many aspects of the internet - including any and all streaming services. Or even Youtube, to a large extent.

While Netflix may be off the table, faster speeds definitely increase usage. I'm on an iPhone running on TMobile's network. About six months ago, I started seeing stable 3G around NYC. Before then, I rarely even used Maps on the phone because the EDGE network was unbearably slow.

Now that I have 3G, it's useably fast on normal day to day stuff, so I surf more, Yelp more, Youtube more, etc. Downloading the day's podcasts takes about 3-5 minutes instead of an hour on EDGE - if I forget to do it at home on wi-fi, I can download them on my walk to the subway.

So yes, faster network connections will encourage greater use. Someone, somewhere will find a use for them, even if it's just the (pretty, but pretty much useless) 3D maps Apple came up with in iOS6.